Conversion Hotel 2016 - Keynotes and Learnings

For the third time in a row Webanalisten.nl organizes the now famous 48 hour social weekend about online optimization at the Texel island, the Netherlands on 18-20 November of 2016.

Keynotes

Throughout the weekend over 10 keynotes were held by leading experts in the conversion optimization field. Due to reasons - that may or may not include intoxication - some of the valuable information might have slipped your mind. Refresh your memory with the information below.

CRO Maturity (Jeffrey Eisenberg)

Key takeaways:

The Eisenberg brothers coined the term Conversion Rate Optimization. Are we now Conversion Optimists? CRO practitioners? CROs?

Why doesn’t the CEO care about conversion rates?

Happiness = Reality - Expectations

If you want to reach a CEO, you’ll have to talk like an architect, not like a mechanic.

Conversion optimization checklists almost all talk about quantity and almost never about quality.

In a couple of years, much more people will be buying stuff based on voice.

Jeffrey considers himself in the business of Customer Experience Optimization.

There is a fundamental misalignment in the goals that companies have and our own goals.

The Netflix CEO announced that their main competitors was sleep.

There are 3 types of distraction: functional, existential, epistemic.

Printing out a list of cognitive biases won’t stop them from influencing you.

If persuasion is the nature of what we do, we should try to adopt a more proper vocabulary.

Let’s try to change ‘Time spent’ to ‘Time well spent’.

Storytelling in Design (Anna Dahlström)

Key takeaways:

We are as a species addicted to stories

If we’ve presented with hard facts, we put our guards up.

Every story takes us on a journey and transports us.

When something works seamlessly it makes it pleasurable.

We don’t know how users are using what we’re designing.

Voice will change absolutely how we interact with the web.

There’s always a beginning, middle and end to a story.

A good story should capture a listeners’ imagination.

Allow a user to explore the website on their terms.

Not every interaction of the users should have to go through the main navigation.

A standard (product) lift-cycle of Awareness, Consideration, Purchase Post-purchase maps out nicely to a story with a beginner, middle and end.

Identify where barriers are, learn how to delight your users.

Tell the right story to the right person, so get to know your audience.

Each device is different, make most of their strengths.

Plan for multiple entry and exit points on your website.

Don’t expect to delight users on every step of their customer journey.

We spend a lot of times learning about our users, but we sometimes forget to make personas for our internal stakeholders and clients.

What do we want our users to see, what is the story we want to tell them?

Responsive websites all the way, separate mobile sites will die off like sinking ships.

Optimization Wheel (John Ekman)

Key takeaways:

Process: what, how, and in what sequence.

Most of the frameworks talk only about the ‘what’.

Many companies are ‘data focussed’, not ‘data driven’.

Change ‘creativity’ with ‘data’ and ‘idea’ with ‘hypothesis’.

How can we decide with hypotheses to turn into experiments?

Data and hypothesis should work in tandem.

How do you know when you have all the right data you need?

Replacing the HIPPO with a prioritization framework.

The better your hypothesis, the faster you can test.

Running A/B tests based on good hypothesis will create compound uplifts.

Visitors asks themselves: Am I in the right place (relevance)? Why should I do this, right here and right now (value)? Can I trust them (trust)? What can I do now (action)? How hard will this be (ease)? If I do this now, what if… (assurance)?

New funnel definition: explore, evaluate, finish, confirm.

Ten Meters of Thinking (Paul Hughes)

Key takeaways:

3 most important things in business: results, results, results.

Conversion Hotel is all about getting better results.

Success is not a point, it’s a path.

98% of what we hear, we forget.

People making a decision will think, feel and use intuition.

First we feel that a decision is right, then we rationalize it.

It’s not about what you say, it’s about their feelings.

First order learning is change, second order is transformation.

Most solutions are offered uniquely, but aren’t unique.

From “How do we do this better?” to “How do we do this different?”.

Or from “Ready Aim Fire” to “Fire Ready Aim”.

Sometimes “Brain storming” feels like “Pain storming”.

Don’t mention any pains to the client you can’t solve.

We need to enter into the conversation that is already in the mind of our clients.